U.S. Senate: Key battleground for gun control

David McCumber

Published 9:52 pm, Tuesday, March 26, 2013

WASHINGTON -- High noon is approaching for gun-control legislation in the Senate, much less the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and prospects for significant reform seem to be dwindling by the day.

Reid announced earlier this month that the bill he intends to bring to the floor will not include the assault weapons ban sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein's ban includes a prohibition on high-capacity magazines.

Senators pushing gun-control issues said they expected to offer both the assault weapons ban and the magazine limitation as separate amendments, both requiring votes by the full Senate.

Proponents of tougher controls are hoping that the two-week recess will give activists time to reach out and be heard as senators tour their home states.

"The majority is on our side," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "But it's a silent majority."

The "classic" view of the issue, Blumenthal said, is that while gun-rights backers are "single-issue voters" -- active and engaged on the gun issue above all else -- those who favor gun control are not necessarily so focused. Guns might be one of several issues they think are important, but they aren't galvanized to speak out or become politically active on the issue.

The recess, Blumenthal said, is the time to prove that theory wrong and for activists to reach out because the Senate is expected to take up the issue shortly after it returns to work April 8.

"We are whipping" the prospective votes on the amendments, Blumenthal said. But he declined to say just where he thought either the full ban or the magazine limitation stood. Others have said both measures have almost no chance of passage, failing an all-out push from advocates over the recess.

That initiative is just what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to kick-start with a $12 million, 13-state ad campaign he and his advocacy group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, announced last week.

Meanwhile, CBS News reported Tuesday that a new poll suggests that Americans' views on gun control are moving back to levels that prevailed before the Dec. 14 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

Just 47 percent of Americans say the nation needs tougher gun laws, CBS found, compared with 57 percent right after the Newtown tragedy.

That number contrasts with other recent polls that show more than 80 percent of Americans favor universal background checks, and a majority favor the assault-weapons ban.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pointed out those statistics in a response to the filibuster threat Tuesday.

"Closing gun-show loopholes, that's an idea that has something like 90 percent support in the United States, (and) by some polls has a majority of support among gun owners in America, support among Republicans and independents. We ought to be able to do this," he told reporters.

Reid has vowed that any Senate gun bill will include universal background checks. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to mandate universal checks was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote, presaging a difficult floor fight. Schumer has been pressing to create a bipartisan consensus on background checks. While he has not been successful to date, "We are on the cusp of a compromise," Blumenthal said late last week.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told Politico last week he's been talking about background checks with the National Rifle Association, which is on record -- in this political cycle, at least -- as being opposed to them.

Universal background checks are "a dishonest premise" and "an abridgement of the Second Amendment," NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre said Sunday on "Meet the Press."

But the discussions with Manchin show that the organization's leaders may actually consider a compromise on background checks as a more defensible position than total opposition. The NRA and LaPierre, after the Columbine shootings in 1999, spoke publicly in favor of universal background checks.